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by dogcomplex 952 days ago
He claims to be ideologically driven. OpenAI's actions as a company up til now point otherwise
4 comments

Sam didn't take equity in OpenAi so I don't see a personal ulterior profit motive as being a big likelihood. We could just wait to find out instead of speculating...
CEO of the first company to own the «machine that’s better than all humans at most economically valuable work» is far rarer than getting rich.
Yeah, if you believe in the AI stuff (which I think everyone at OpenAI does, not Microsoft though) there is a huge amount of power in these positions. Much greater power in the future than any amount of wealth could grant you.
Except the machine isn't.
I'd say it is. Not because the machine is so great but because most people suck.

It was described as a "bullshit generator" in a post earlier today. I think that's accurate. I just also think it's an apt description of most people as well.

It can replace a lot of jobs... and then we can turn it off, for a net benefit.

This sort of comment has become a cliché that needs to be answered.

Most people are not good at most things, yes. They're consumers of those things, not producers. For producers there is a much higher standard, one that the latest AI models don't come anywhere close to meeting.

If you think they do, feel free to go buy options and bet on the world being taken over by GPUs.

> If you think they do, feel free to go buy options and bet on the world being taken over by GPUs.

This assumes too much. GPUs may not hold the throne for long, especially given the amount of money being thrown at ASICs and other special-purpose ICs. Besides, as with the Internet, it's likely that AI adoption will benefit industries in an unpredictable manner, leaving little alpha for direct bets like you're suggesting.

I'm not betting on the gpus. I'm betting that whole categories of labor will disappear. They're preserved because we insist that people work, but we don't actually need the product of that labor.

AI may figure into that, filling in some work that does have to be done. But it need not be for any of those jobs that actually require humans for the foreseeable future -- arts of all sorts and other human connections.

This isn't about predicting the dominance of machines. It's about asking what it is we really want to do as humans.

I’d bet it won’t. A lot of people and services are paid and billed by man-hours spent and not by output. Even values of tangible objects are traced to man-hours spent. Utility of output is mere modifier.

What I believe will happen is, eventually we’ll be paying and get paid for depressing a do-everything button, and machines will have their own economy that isn’t on USD.

It's not a bullshit generator unless you ask it for bullshit.

It's amazing at troubleshooting technical problems. I use it daily, I cannot understand how anyone dismisses it if they've used it in good faith for anything technical.

In this scenario, the question is not what exists today, but what the CEO thinks will exist before they stop being CEO.
i would urge you to compare the current state of this question to appx one year ago
He's already set for life rich
Plus, he succeeded in making HN the most boring forum ever.

8 out of 10 posts are about LLMs.

The other two are written by LLMs.
In terms of impact, LLMs might be the biggest leap forward in computing history, surpassing the internet and mobile computing. And we are just at the dawn of it. Even if not full AGI, computers can now understand humans and reason. The excitement is justified.
Nah. LLM's are hype-machines capable of writing their own hype.

Q: What's the difference between a car salesman and an LLM?

A: The car salesman knows they're lying to you.

'Understand' and 'reason' are pretty loaded terms.

I think many people would disagree with you that LLMs can truly do either.

There's 'set for life' rich and then there's 'able to start a space company with full control' rich.
I don't understand that mental illness. If I hit low 8 figures, I pack it in and jump off the hamster wheel.
Is he? Loopy only sold for $40m and then he managed YC and then OpenAI on a salary? Where are the riches from?
But if you want that, you need actual control. A voting vs non voting shares split.
is that even certain, or is that his line to mean that one of his holding companies or investment firms he has a stake in holds openai equity but not him as an individual
That's no fun though
openai (the brand) has complex corporate structure with split for profit non profit entities and afaik the details are private. It would appear that the statement “Sam didn’t take equity in OAI” has been PR engineered based on technicalities related to this shadow structure.
I would suspect this as well...
What do you mean did not take equity? As a CEO he did not get equity comp?
It was supposed to be a non-profit
Worldcoin https://worldcoin.org/ deserves a mention
Hmm, curious, what this is about? I click.

> On a sunny morning last December, Iyus Ruswandi, a 35-year-old furniture maker in the village of Gunungguruh, Indonesia, was woken up early by his mother

...Ok, closing that bullshit, let's try the other link.

> As Kudzanayi strolled through the mall with friends

Jesus fucking Christ I HATE journalists. Like really, really hate them.

I mean it's Buzzfeed, it shouldn't even be called journalism. That's the outlet that just three days ago sneakily removed an article from their website that lauded a journalist for talking to school kids about his sexuality. After he recently got charged with distributing child pornography.

Many of the people working for mass media are their own worst enemy when it comes to the profession's reputation. And then they complain that there's too much distrust in the general public.

Anyway,the short regarding that project is that they use biometric data, encrypt it and put a "hash"* of it on their blockchain. That's been controversial from the start for obvious reasons although most of the mainstream criticism is misguided and by people who don't understand the tech.

*They call it a hash but I think it's technically not.

https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/technical-implementation

How so? Seems they’re doing a pretty good job of making their stuff accessible while still being profitable.
To be fair, we don't really know if OpenAI is successful because of Altman or despite Altman (or anything in-between).
do you have reason to believe none of the two?
Profit? It's a 501(c).
As someone who is the Treasurer/Secretary of a 501(c)(3) non-profit I can tell you that is it always possible for a non-profit to bring in more revenue than it costs to run the non-profit. You can also pay salaries to people out of your revenue. The IRS has a bunch of educational material for non-profits[1], and a really good guide to maintaining your exemption [2].

[1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/publications-for-e...

[2] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p4221pc.pdf

Yes. Kaiser Permanente is a good example to illustrate your point. Just Google “Kaiser Permanente 501c executive salaries white paper”.
The parent is, OpenAI Global, LLC is a for profit non-wholly-owned subsidiary with outside investors; there's also OpenAI LP, which is a for-profit limited partnership with the no profit as general partner, also with outside investors (I thought it was the predecessor of the LLC, but they both seem to have been formed in 2019 and still exist?) OpenAI has for years been a nonprofit shell around a for-profit firm.

EDIT: A somewhat more detailed view of the structure, based on OpenAI’s own description, is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38312577

Thanks for explaining the basic structure. It seems quite opaque and probably designed to be. It would be nice if someone can determine which entities he currently still has a position or equity in.

Since this news managed to crush HN's servers it's definitely a topic of significant interest.

A non-profit can make plenty of profit, there just aren't any shareholders.
Depends if you're talking about "OpenAI, Inc." (non-profit) or "OpenAI Global, LLC" (for profit corporation). They're both under the same umbrella corporation.
NFL was a non profit up until 2015ish
100%. Man I was worried he'd be a worse, more slimy elon musk who'd constantly say one thing but his actions portray another story. People will be fooled again.
Say what you will, but in true hacker spirit he has created a product that automated his job away at scale.